Archive of Our Own ^beta

Let it be known that Dean was skeptical of this plan from the get-go. Okay, so he knows he’s not perfect, and he knows he can be a little bit of a pessimist when push comes to shove, but sometimes he gets sick of pretending that most of his suspicious hunches don’t end up being true. It’s common sense, right? A trap is a trap even if it’s wearing sheep’s clothing. So sue him if his shoulders are tense up around his ears as he walks centered between Cas and Sam through a heavy autumn forest, approaching a little rundown stone house.

“Talk about Blair Witch,” he mutters through the side of his mouth to Cas. Then, louder so that his voice can be heard over the sound of their boots shuffling through the four or so inches of foliage that have collected to rot on the forest floor, “So which little piggy lives here again?”

“Apparently there were mutilated cows found at the west end of some farmer’s property, about a mile or so from here on the other side of the woods. The treeline is right up against the furthest point of his pasture. Said three of his cows were missing, couldn’t find the bodies anywhere for a few days, but when he drove his tractor through to cover all of his bases, he found blood trails leading a few yards back into the trees,” Sam answers.

“And let me guess,” Dean says, “he found three quarter-pounders that were ballooned like the Goodyear Blimp.”

Sam makes a face that pulls his mouth down in disgust. “Probably smellier than a Goodyear Blimp.”

“You’d imagine. Any chance it was just a cow suicide pact? Maybe the farmer was feeding them horse pellets and they couldn’t take it anymore.”

“Not unless dead cows know how to remove their own hearts and hooves.”

It’s Dean’s turn to make a face of disgust. Still, his frown inverts to a funny little smirk when Cas says completely candidly, “They can’t.”

“Oh-ho, we got a bovine expert on our hands,” Dean teases.

And the thing is, being with Cas, like, together together has complicated a lot of things. Like now when they’re on the road, Dean wants Cas on the passenger side of the front bench with him, but Sam gets car sick in the back, so instead of getting to be next to his smoking hot boyfriend, Dean has to steal glances in the rearview mirror as he listens to Sam’s nasally So get this! Or the fact that Dean can get all pissy and huffy when Cas is interviewing witnesses and one of the girls that’s bartending starts flirting with him. Or how sometimes they get so clingy with each other, between the Impala and cases and the Bunker, that they forget to breathe into their own lungs, until Dean finally had to draw the line when Cas followed him into the bathroom when he was trying to shit.

A lot of things have gotten more complicated, but a lot of things have gotten uncomplicated, too. Like the way that right now, instead of Cas using his words to tell Dean off for picking on him, Cas reels a hand back and smacks Dean across the seat of his jeans so hard that Dean jumps forward with a yelp. “Fuck!”

“It’s called a love tap,” Cas says dryly without looking at Dean at all. But, oh, that smug bastard is biting back a smile.

“Yeah, and C4 is just a type of firework.” Dean runs loving fingers over his asscheek that damn well may have a welt on it. Okay, not really, but he’s allowed to be dramatic. “Shit, sweetheart, you fucking laced me up.”

“We don’t have time for your flirting,” Sam says with not even a hint of amusement as they finally approach the stone house. Dean looks over at him in exasperation and annoyance, because Dean and Cas can flirt and this is so not flirting, and also if this is what Sam thinks flirting is- what is he doing to his girlfriends?- but it’s useless considering the fact that Sam doesn’t even look up from the paper map that he’s reading. “I’m gonna go around back, take a look and see if there’s any fresh digs in the ground. Anything buried or out of place that could line up with rituals. That’ll help tell us whether it’s a witch or a vampire.”

“A witchpire,” Dean offers just because he knows it’ll get him an eye roll.

Sam stops in his tracks and finally looks up at Dean just to say, “You’re so goddamn stupid,” before folding the map up, tucking it into his back pocket, and stepping forward to the left side of the house (hut?) where a creaky wooden fence is barely hanging on its hinges. It squeaks and just about falls apart when Sam opens up the gate of it before disappearing around the house.

“So it’s just the two of us, huh?”

Cas says, “Sam’s right, we don’t have time for flirting.”

It makes Dean scoff. “Says you, smacking my ass.”

“That was retribution. Don’t act like you can’t tell the difference.”

“Well, I guess I’m sorry for trying to get laid.”

At this, Cas turns from where he’d been eyeing up the house so that his gaze lands on Dean’s face. It stays there, tender, rugged, warm in a way that settles so heavy on Dean’s browline to the bridge of his nose to his mouth that Dean’s blood starts to dance around in his fingertips. He and Cas have shacked up so many times now that Dean’s lost count, but it doesn’t stop his heart from pacing. Doesn’t stop him from wanting to avert his own eyes in shyness. But he doesn’t buckle under the heat as he locks up to watch Cas right back.

Cas licks his lips. “There’s no need to apologize.”

Fine. Dean’s will isn’t strong enough. He’s the one to back down first, laughing under his breath and scratching at the base of his neck. “I- Um- Okay.” With that, he turns to the house hut and starts towards its wooden door. “Let’s see what the Alaskan Bush People are hiding in here.”

He turns the door knob and they enter the house like that, one right after the other, Cas a solid presence at Dean’s back. Dean thinks he likes that a lot. And then he thinks, actually, he could not have had a lovelier thought in a more fucked up place.

It’s enough to have even him gagging, throwing his hand up over his nose to try and unsuccessfully stop the smell of blood and decay from entering his nostrils. There are animal parts so mutilated that they’re beyond comprehension, a squirrel or a cat or a raccoon, impossible to tell. And Dean sees where the cow hearts went now, three of them sitting in a bronze bowl adorning some sort of satanic altar. On the walls, sigils in all different forms are done up in a mixture of spray paint and blood.

“Dude,” Dean chokes out.

“What… is this?” Cas asks slowly. He’s braver (or just has less common sense) than Dean because he reaches up to grab hold of what looks like an animal's jawbone where it’s hanging by thread from the ceiling.

“Disgusting,” Dean replies. “And I thought Sam was a creative kid. This gives a whole new meaning to a paleo diet.”

“Is it a witch?”

“I mean, it’s gotta be, right? Vampires don’t play with their food like this.” Dean takes his hand from his mouth and shakes his head. “None of this makes sense, though. I’ve never seen even a witch be so sloppy. It’s gonna sound bad coming out of my mouth, but there’s a lot of perfectly good ritual blood that’s going to waste here.”

When Dean turns to look at Cas, he’s staring up at the sigils scarring the stone wall. His head is tilted to the side- adorable, not adorable, the most powerful being on Earth at the moment, manages to look like a kitten in a trenchcoat, manages to raise a single eyebrow at Dean so that Dean’s legs turn to jelly because Cas is so focused on him, no one else- as he considers the markings. “These sigils… they’re almost completely unfamiliar to me.”

“So you don’t think it’s a demon?”

Cas sighs. “Not an angel either. I don’t know what to think.” He turns to face Dean, looking solemn and sweet all in one go. “Perhaps we should split up. I’ll take this room to the left, you take this room and the closet there. Then we’ll meet up with Sam to see what he’s discovered.”

“Deal,” Dean says. He makes a face. “Damn, it’s gonna take a week to get this stench out of my friggin’ nose hairs.”

But Cas just waves his hand and replies, “I’ll clear your sinuses once we leave.” And then he’s walking towards the closed door to the left of them, opening it, and passing through it. Dean watches him go and feels this aggressive sort of need that’s a little kid type of needy. Tie my shoes for me type of needy. He’s got someone to take care of him even when he doesn’t ask for it, like he doesn’t have to anticipate every one of Cas’s emotions in exchange for having his needs met.

He doesn’t even think Cas is aware that humans hold things over each other like that. That Dean would do anything- anything- to receive even an ounce of affection from the angel, and in fact, maybe Dean would even like doing it in some fucked up way, forever the dog begging for scraps at the side of the table. Drop something on the floor for me. Drop a kind word on the floor for me to scarf up like I’m starving, and I’ll be a good boy and walk by your side forever.

Cas keeps offering Dean a seat at the table like it’s an afterthought, and Dean keeps taking it even though he still hasn’t figured out where to put his paws when he’s sitting in a human-shaped chair.

So this will all be over at some point, and they’ll make their trek out of the forest through the thick autumn leaves decaying on the ground, and Cas will reach a hand out with a tender fucking mitt of a palm to cup Dean’s shoulder and take the smell out of his nose and he won’t call Dean a pussy for complaining about it. In fact, Cas won’t say anything at all. Won’t make a fuss, like taking care of Dean is just second nature to him because it is. And Cas won’t even ask for a kiss in return as a joke because nothing about any of this is transactional.

“Thanks,” Dean says to the now dead air of the main room of the hut.

With that, he pitters around the hell hole of a place. Flips over papers, takes pictures of the sigils on the wall with his phone, decidedly does not take pictures of any of the bloody stuff and just tries to keep a mental tally of what they’re working with so that if they need to do research when they get home they can. Just as he’s tinkering with a little vial that’s full of some questionable dirt (hopefully dirt), Dean hears the slightest squeak of a floorboard. It’s coming from the closed closet.

Even after all this time hunting, his blood still runs a little cold with shit like this. He feels it now, that same adrenaline rush drop in his stomach, as he reaches into his back waistband for his gun. One steady step at a time, he creeps towards the handle that looks like a snake about to bite him.

He’s got his gun in his right hand while his left reaches out, but before he can make contact with the brass, the door in front of him springs open with a slam. It all happens so fast, the gun getting knocked from Dean’s hand to the ground while a body steamrolls into him. It’s a white guy with a shaved head and bulging eyes, breath foul where his mouth is only inches from Dean’s face as he’s screaming, “How’d you find me here?! You’ve been tracking me! I KNOW YOU’VE BEEN TRACKING ME!”

Dean tries to swing at the man, but the angle is awkward because Skinhead has a hold of Dean’s lapels and is shaking him.

“You’ve got partners! I know you do, I heard them! Where are they?!”

“Fuck you,” Dean spits.

“I’ll cut your tongue right out of your head, swine!” And then the dude manages to catch Dean by surprise when he lets go with one hand to reach into his pocket to pull out a knife. It’s sharp, sizable, and Dean doesn’t have a moment to react or shout for Cas before it’s heading straight towards his chest.

Is this really how he’s gonna go out? Stabbed by a Nazi Boy Scout? And there’s a moment of fear so genuine that it takes over all of Dean’s bodily functions, damn near stops his heart as he watches in slow motion as that blade gets closer and closer to his sternum. Until it’s interrupted.

It happens in a split second as Dean watches the knife go straight through Cas’s hand like butter.

“What-!” Dean exclaims. There’s a lot of blood when Cas twists his hand against the entry wound and takes the knife with him where it’s still stuck in him before he reaches his other hand up to clap the man across the side of the head so hard it would’ve put an ordinary human in the hospital. Maybe it still will, no matter what type of creature this guy is, because he falls to the ground in a twitching heap. And Dean doesn’t even have a moment to think, Good riddance, because he’s too busy trying to restart his brain at the sight of the massive amount of blood trailing out of Cas at the moment.

“Cas,” he chokes, “Cas, you’re hand.”

“What?” Cas looks up at him, blinking in confusion. He glances down at his hand as though it hadn’t even occurred to him that he had a major puncture of an appendage. “Oh.” Then, like it’s a splinter, he tugs the blade from his hand, almost inconsequential how it just slides right out, and throws the soiled thing down on top of Skinhead’s body. “It’s nothing.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? We need to get you stitches, we need to get Sam- a hospital- we need-”

“Dean!” Cas calls over him. And, no, Dean refuses to shut up about this, but when he opens his mouth to cut Cas off right back he’s stopped in his tracks by Cas raising the previously mangled hand that’s now miraculously fine. “I’m an angel, remember? I can heal myself.”

“Oh,” Dean says, suddenly sheepish. “Right. I- I knew that.”

Cas is looking at Dean now, right through him in that way he does that Dean thought he’d become accustomed to after a few years, especially now that they’re an item, but instead of getting used to it Dean just feels like a glass house with its shutters wide open. Cas takes a step closer to Dean, another, completely ignoring the body that’s crumpled on the floor, and somehow even that is sexy to Dean in a way that he can’t explain. That even though there is so much happening that should be taking priority at the moment, Cas is still prioritizing Dean. Almost like he’s important or something.

“I’m okay, Dean,” Cas says softly. Soft without being gentle. Intimate. “I’m grateful I got here in time to protect you.”

And there it is again, that feeling like Dean’s heart is being yanked offstage by a cartoonishly long cane. Someone is here protecting him, and more than that, is happy to be doing it. Grateful, even. Just because Dean has a hard time being honest with himself, that doesn’t mean that he’s blind. His pulse races then settles again when he thinks about Cas’s strong body stepping in front of him. Makes Dean feel all small. If you tied my boots for me, I’d start bawling.

That’s a thought for not right now- whether that means for later or for never, Dean isn’t sure yet- as they continue standing in this filthy fucking place with some sort of possessed bastard passed out on the floor by their feet. So Dean doesn’t respond to Cas’s sentiment because he’s not sure how, and instead kicks a foot at Skinhead’s ribs.

“Right. So what’s this guy's deal?”

“Human.”

Dean blinks. “Seriously?”

“Yes. He’s a Satan Worshipper. A bad one at that. I didn’t recognize any of the sigils because none of them were right or real.”

“You’re telling me this bastard was going this whole extra mile just to get bupkis?”

“I believe he was more concerned with cruelty than he was with getting results.”

The hard tone of Cas’s voice and the words themselves make Dean frown. He glances at the guy on the ground again. “Did you– I mean, is he dead?”

“No, I didn’t kill him. He’s simply unconscious and he’ll stay that way.”

“That’s… ominous.”

Cas sighs. “I do not believe in being both judge and executioner, and I have already killed too many to count. I won’t add this scum to my list of shame. However, if you were able to see inside his head, his soul, the way I can.” Cas pauses and looks at the wall like this is a threat that he can’t meet Dean’s eyes when making. “If you could, you would perhaps be the first to tell me to execute him rather mercilessly. However, I think both of us have enough blood on our hands for a lifetime. So I will let fate decide for him. If someone finds him out here and decides to save him, I’m sure he’ll be very relieved to wake up in a hospital room. And if no one finds him before his body starts to waste away…” Cas shrugs.

“Holy fuck,” Dean breathes, and, like, it’s a little messed up that he finds that attractive, right? The way Cas so effortlessly balances on the line of righteous justice and sympathetic forgiveness. Like letting fate decide the matter is taking a weight off of Cas’s shoulders because Cas doesn’t need to be in control all of the time. It’s one of Dean’s favorite things about him, his lack of need to prove himself to anything other than himself.

“Is that… okay?” Cas hesitates. “If you’d like to take him somewhere to be treated for his head injury, I understand.”

Dean looks down at the wasted man and thinks about the way the knife had almost stopped his heart, and the way it had stuck unnaturally out of Cas’s fleshy palm, and says, “Nah. Nah, I trust your judgment. If you say leave him, we leave him. Was he working with anyone?”

Cas shakes his head. “No. Alone.”

“Perfect. Let’s get Sammy and get the fuck out of here. I’m not gonna be able to eat a hamburger for a month.”

He starts to the door knowing that Cas will be following right behind him. “We both know that’s not true.”

“Fine,” Dean relents, “but a week for sure. No beef.”

…

Time goes on as it tends to do, minutes turning into hours passing where Dean keeps good on his promise of laying off the red meat. Even though the ride home took them past a diner that was apparently known by the locals for its phenomenal steak and eggs, and even though Cas had dutifully removed any remaining traces of stink from Dean’s nasal passages, Dean still asked the waitress for a BLT. It was just okay. Nothing the poor pig could do about that.

Dean’s hoping that the miles of blacktop under him will set his head back on straight, but all that he gets is Sam passed out in the passenger seat while Dean’s brain drifts. This… blemish of a road bump of a thought. Like an air bubble getting stubbornly stuck under a pool liner. The memory of the not-case that they just wrapped up echoes, a repeating cassette tape stuck on Side A because-

He glances up at the rearview mirror to where Cas is staring very intently at his phone. The angel’s been on a Flappy Bird kick recently, after Charlie had done something to his cell so that he could download the defunct app, because, according to Charlie, it was a powerful and lost culture.

Cas’s focus on his phone means that he’s not focusing on Dean, which gives Dean a minute to study him. Even when he’s playing a children’s game, he’s so… strong. Before he’d met Cas, Dean didn’t know strength could look like this, feel like this. Every other type of strong that Dean had met had come from a place of resistance, where fighting the good fight, bleeding for the good war, killing for approval was a badge of honor. Dean watches Cas raise an annoyed eyebrow at the game when he dies, from what Dean can guess. Castiel doesn’t need conflict to be strong.

He could take a bullet to the chest without a flinch and could break his own fingers like a party trick if he wanted to. He’s a million-year-old warrior who would rather talk to the clerk at Lowe’s about gardening than about gun stats. And when they have sex, sometimes Cas will have his hands on Dean’s hips, and he doesn’t know it and Dean's never said it, but he’s so unnaturally strong that he’ll hold Dean right there in place even against the force of his own thrusts. It’s not the same as humans, not a good grip for the sake of getting some purchase. When Cas has Dean by the hips like that… It's like he’s driving him. Like Dean can’t get away, even though every thrust feels like it should be moving him two inches further up the bed, his hips become a spotting point for the rest of the world to hitch around.

And Dean sort of loves it.

Images of the disgusting stone hut float up in Dean’s mind, and it’s not any of the rancid shit, it’s the way Cas reached in front of a knife for Dean like it was nothing. The way Cas was alien when he fixed his wound up between one blink and the next. How softly he’d spoken to Dean just afterward.

Dean gives a shudder, a little thing, and forces himself to refocus his eyes on the road when he notices he’s been drifting too close to the rumble strip to his right. He glances into the review again and he has no idea what he wants or if he’ll tell Cas any of this at all.

Just then, Cas looks up from his phone and their gaze catches and Cas is smiling. “I just beat my high score,” he says proudly.

“Oh yeah? What’d you get to?”

“Fifteen.”

Oh, Dean could strangle him with how much he loves him. And the thing is, Cas could breathe through being choked. The thought makes Dean shift a little on the front bench against the stiffy he’s starting to pop. He clears his throat but his lips are ticked up to the side when he says, “Careful with all that power, man, you might become a world record holder.”

“Yes, if I practice very diligently.” With that, Cas is looking back down at his phone with laser focus.

Dean thinks about Cas and the word diligent in the same sentence for too long, and it’s an uncomfortable ride home with the boner he’s got.

…

When they all pile back into the Bunker, the first thing Dean does is head to the kitchen. Okay, so maybe he doesn’t go straight to the kitchen. Maybe he goes straight to the bathroom where he takes an extremely short and uneventful cold shower to get rid of his semi, but then the first thing he does is go to the kitchen. Usually if driving isn’t enough to clear his head, making something on the stove is, and Lord knows Dean’s head could use some clearing.

Whatever this is… this feeling… He just can’t pin it down.

So instead he starts dicing up onions for the start of a red sauce. It’s second nature to him, and he’ll probably make spaghetti for dinner because spaghetti with homemade sauce is easy at the same time that it takes care, so Dean usually makes it when he’s going through crisis. Not that anyone needs to know that.

The onions make him blink stinging tears from his eyes, so he moves through them fast to start mincing some garlic instead. He’s throwing both down into the bottom of a pot with some butter to start sweating them out when Cas walks in behind him, drawing up close and standing there a few feet away.

“Hello, Dean.”

“Hey, sweetheart. Get any further on Flappy Bird?”

“Yes. Up to twenty-two.” And then there’s this pause that Dean can’t really decipher because he’s stirring his aromatics around in the bottom of the pan, before Cas says, “You’re making sauce.”

“Yeah, I figured we could do spaghetti tonight. Even the pork in that BLT earlier wigged me a little bit, thought something nice and meatless would be a reprieve. And you know how Sam likes his shit on the vegetarian side of the equator.”

It’s like Dean hadn’t said literally anything at all when Cas follows his last thought up with, “You make red sauce when you’re going through crisis.”

Goddamn him. Dean’s first instinct is to play stupid, but that won’t get him anywhere but in a crapshoot with Cas that he really doesn’t feel like being in right now. So his second instinct is to skirt around it, instead. “Oh, you- uh- you picked up on that, huh?”

“You’re a very routine and ritual-based person.”

“Me?” Dean asks. He finally looks over his shoulder to where Cas is standing just behind him, leaning his weight back onto his hands against the metal cart. “Doing routine?”

“You enjoy habit now that you have a safe place to sustain it. You didn’t have enough stability in your early years to form a routine, so you find comfort in doing it because you have a home. And you’re dodging my first question, by the way.”

Dean’s feeling a little- I don’t know- sensitive, so he cops a cagey attitude when he responds, “You never asked me a question.”

“Fine,” Cas says, just as stubborn as Dean is. Dean loves that. “Why are you making red sauce, a food that you make when you are going through crisis?”

Dean licks his lips and stares resolutely down into the pot where his onions are about to start burning if he doesn’t add some canned tomato in soon.

“It’s not a crisis. Not a full-blown one, anyway.”

“But something is bothering you,” Cas hedges.

To buy himself more time, Dean reaches for his can of tomatoes and uses the nifty little tab on top to pop them open. The tabs on top of canned goods like this are becoming more common these days, and it makes Dean reminisce on being a kid in hotel rooms, making Spaghettios for Sam without a can-opener, so Dean would have to pry the cans open with a knife. Now, here, in his own kitchen that he actually has a can opener in, the cans have tabs on them already. Irony is a bitch like that.

The seconds tick by as he empties the tomato purée into his pot. Finally, he lands on saying, “There’s just something that- I’m just thinking, is all.”

“You’re certainly thinking loudly,” Cas says.

“Yeah, well, it’s a diesel engine up there. I refuse to switch to electric.”

“Have you considered a hybrid?”

“Hybrids aren’t for cars, hybrids are for horses.”

“That’s poetic,” Cas quips, “you should write a children’s story. Are we done playing this game now?”

Dean doesn’t have any excuses left now that the tomatoes are in with everything else. There’s still more seasoning he wants to add, but nothing is going to burn if he leaves it on a simmer, and he thinks if he tried to use oregano as a stalling device Cas would kill him. So he gives up the ghost. Turns around all the way to see that Cas is standing exactly how he was before, looking soft and strong and sure and slightly annoyed in the yellow overhead lighting that catches his dark brown hair and turns parts of it golden. And it’s not that Dean doesn’t want to talk- even though he really doesn’t because ever since Hell he never has- it’s that more than anything he kind of wants to be a baby about this. He wouldn’t know how to ask for a hug so he doesn’t, just leans into Cas’s space closer and closer until it’s physically impossible for Cas to not be hugging him.

Cas’s arms are warm where they wrap him up. “Was it the stone house, earlier? You seemed more upset about the gore than you usually would. Which is alright,” he tacks on at the end.

“I mean, uh, my stomach has definitely gotten weaker in my old age, but it’s not that. I could lay off the meat anyway, for my cholesterol. Don’t you dare fucking tell Sam I said that, though.”

“My lips are sealed.”

Dean closes his eyes where his chin is hooked over Cas’s shoulder and steels his balls enough to say, “I’m thinking about you.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Is it… something bad?”

“No, it’s- it’s really good, actually, I think, but that makes it- harder. For me.”

“The good?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Cas agrees like he understands.

For a long moment neither of them says anything, just stand there holding each other while the room around them slowly starts to smell like the warmth of a home-cooked meal.

“I liked-“ Dean says so quietly that it’s almost a breath. His lip quivers. “I liked when you got in front of me, protected me from Redneck Rodeo earlier. You make…” Dean’s words trip, “me feel… Fuck, dude. Sorry. It’s hard to get myself to say it.”

“We don’t have to-“ Cas starts gently.

Just to have Dean interrupt him by blurting, “It’s kind of a sex thing,” while he still has the backbone to do it. Before Cas can reply, Dean adds, “I don’t know what I want, yet. I don’t even really know what I’m thinking- which is what I’m thinking about.”

“That sounds like you. Thinking about what you’re thinking,” Cas teases without any edge to it. Enough to break the tension and get a chuckle out of Dean. “Have you thought at all about feeling it instead? I do believe you used the word feel just now.”

“Yeah, well, I feel embarrassed.”

“You’re not usually one to shy away from fornication.”

Dean’s not usually one to get greedy. To need more than he’s got, because what he’s got is already so goddamn good it feels sinful to keep begging at that door. So usually he just pushes it all down, the little things. He’s just not there yet. Things like getting slapped during sex and wearing women’s underwear and putting on fun costumes are just part of Dean’s mystical little fantasy world that don’t need to be brought to the light of day.

So why is it this that he’s actively trying to bring up instead of burying it down under his ribcage and suffocating it with purpose until its little spark is so oxygen-deprived that the flame goes out? Here he is in the warm overhead light of their kitchen, standing wrapped up in Cas’s arms, and trying to put something so big into words so small. Not just big, but unheard of in his past, never supposed to be his because he’s always been such a man, always been a protector. And maybe it’s not even that the thing itself is so embarrassing, but more how earnestly Dean wants it.

And the precarious answer to both his own question and to Cas’s is, “This is about more than just sex. Even though the sex is a bonus.”

“It’s about… you…” Cas says it slowly, like he’s trying to let Dean fill in the blanks.

“Liking it when you take care of me.”

“Okay.” Cas is being real delicate with him. It used to be that getting talked to gently like that would make Dean buck like a bronco. Now he just hides his face in Cas’s neck.

Dean grits his teeth. “Today when you went Angel Mode and took that knife for me, it made me feel safe. And- and small. Especially once you healed yourself, it was like I was watching some Houdini act, thinking to myself, maybe I don’t have to carry this, ‘cause this guy is invincible. Maybe I don’t have to be the one to take the stake to the heart for someone else every time.”

“I took care of you today when I protected you,” Cas says like he’s confirming something.

“Yeah.”

“May I… confess something?”

Dean hesitates. “What?”

“I also like it when you allow me to take care of you.”

“You do?”

“Mmm,” Cas hums with a single nod of his head that drags his stubble against Dean’s temple. “It makes me feel… as though I’m stretching the muscles in my chest for the first time in my life. Does that make any sense?”

And the thing is, it does. Dean knows the exact sensation that Cas is describing because he feels it himself daily, when his love gets so expansive inside of him that it has to crack a rib to release all the extra pressure. It feels like being made a size too small, and like maybe the right size isn’t just one step bigger, it’s actually whatever the displacement of air around them is when he and Cas’s body masses are combined. Moments where Cas is sitting beside him in a diner and their thighs are pressed together and Dean wishes he could dig a tunnel directly from his hamstring into Cas’s, the way kids try to dig tunnels to the center of the Earth.

“Yeah, it does.” he finally responds.

There’s a moment’s pause before Cas says, “Alright, you’ve had enough hiding.” And the bastard is dragging Dean up and away in order to hold him at arm’s length so that they can look each other in the eyes.

Dean’s pretty sure he’s blushing, feels all hot and bothered under the collar because it’s one thing to admit any of this and it’s another thing to face the consequences. The consequences being Cas’s kind but steady expression. His head tilts to the side while he watches Dean like he’s solving a crossword puzzle that he’s also in love with.

“What do you like about it?”

“Cas, I don’t-” Dean blusters a laugh. Fuck, he really should have kept his fucking mouth shut because wasn’t it just him who was thinking to himself how much he liked the fact that Cas is stubborn? No way in Hell Cas is gonna let this go now. Shit. Could have just stayed in Dean’s Wank Bank until he died and then the currency could have rolled over. Inherited by some poor son of a bitch who’s probably way less traumatized than Dean is.

“No. You want this. You want something that I can give to you, and I’m going to give it to you,” Cas says sternly.

Oh, Christ. That cold shower he took earlier is starting to feel a little pointless.

“Fine! Fine, okay, I like it when you boss me around.”

Cas’s face screws up into confusion so fast that it almost has Dean laughing. It’s that weird face he pulls sometimes, where his cheeks pinch and his eyes wrinkle and his eyebrows come down to touch the bridge of his nose. “You hate it when I boss you around,” he says dubiously.

“I like it when you’re in charge, then?”

“I- I have to say, Dean, I really do not think I’m following how this line of thought connected to your last one.”

It’s gonna be like this, then? Dean growls. “What’s not clicking?”

“Any of it!”

“Shit, Cas! I like it when you take care of me, okay?! I like it when you boss me around because it means that for those few, precious seconds, I don’t have to think about how I’m gonna get out of a tight spot, or if things between Sam and I are alright, or what I have to make for dinner, because I trust you to make the right decisions for me. And I like it when you’re in charge because you’re one of the only people I’ve met in my life who knows how to be in control without thinking it makes you better than anyone else. That you can be strong, and in charge, and in control without shitting on me to get there- ‘cause you love me. And, Christ, you make me feel like I can be weak and that’s not a bad thing. So I don’t know, Cas, you tell me!”

Dean's chest is heaving against the weight that just left it. He usually hates his anger, his adrenaline, but right now he’s thankful that it pried the words out of his mouth for him, no matter how weirdly squirmy and shameful they make him feel. Cas is staring him down, face set, eyes as soft as fleece and as pinpoint as a bullet from Dean’s gun. He juts his stubbled chin out at Dean before he steps forward into the gap between them and grabs Dean by the waist. There’s a push to Dean’s middle that he follows dutifully, Cas guiding them in a tight circle so that the two of them have turned themselves around with Dean now having his back against the cold metal of the cart.

Before Dean can ask him what he’s doing, Cas is leaning into his space with one arm to either side of Dean’s body, hands finding purchase against the cart and essentially caging Dean in. Cas stands tall. This immovable look about him. Their faces are a few inches apart but it’s nothing like being about to kiss. In fact, Dean almost has a hard time meeting Cas’s gaze and finds his eyelashes fluttering to the floor instead.

A different type of adrenaline ticks in him. Cas is a wall of a body, angelic to the point that if he wanted to be, he may as well be reinforced steel. It reminds Dean of the very second night that he ever met Cas in Bobby’s kitchen, where Cas was all power and threats to throw Dean back into the pit. A different lifetime from where they’re at now. But- but it’s that same kind of look. Dean’s arms are down at his sides and he doesn’t say anything to break this sudden tension that Cas has created between them, just clenches and unclenches his fists so that he has something to do with his hands.

Then, Cas speaks in this flat, disciplined tone. “Like this?” he says. “You want this?”

Dean’s jaw ticks at the side and he swallows. So fucking shy when he finally looks up from the concrete floor to meet Cas’s eyes. They’re blue and they’re eating Dean alive.

“You still love me, don’tcha?”

“It’s important to you that in this scenario my control does not affect the respect and care I have for you.”

Lip wobbling. “Yeah.”

“Or is it, even, that I’m exercising my control without inflicting it on you at all. My strength is not a way to keep you in line. You already keep yourself in line, you don’t need me for that. I’m not here to be your commander, I’m here to be your shepherd.”

“Cas. Please,” and he doesn’t know what he’s asking for but maybe he doesn’t have to.

Cas seems to understand his plea because very slowly and firmly, there’s a set of lips being pressed against his. It’s familiar and it’s strange because Cas doesn’t deepen it. Dean’s pretty sure Cas doesn’t even close his eyes at all. That alien way about him that shows through less and less these days as he becomes more human at Dean’s side. He’s definitely still got the snuff though.

A hand presses broad against Dean’s waist again before it slips under the hem of his t-shirt to pet the soft skin of his stomach. Cas’s palm is hot against Dean here. It makes Dean’s breath come out weak. He could be putty like this if that’s what Cas wanted him to be. Melting back into the cart behind him until he’s welded to it, unable to move, unable to escape Cas’s sandpaper cat’s tongue affection.

“Fuck,” Dean breathes

“I’m right here,” Cas states. He actually- he actually fucking licks Dean’s neck below his jaw. Then he’s slotting his dick- which is hard, like, really hard- right up against the crotch of Dean’s jeans, and the fact that there are four layers of fabric between them sort of feels like nothing at all with the strange intimacy of the moment. Like there’s been times that Dean’s fisted both of their dicks in one hand that have felt less compromising than this. “It’s curious how the universe works. I’ve always wanted to take you in the kitchen.”

“You-” Between one blink and the next, Cas’s hand is gone, taken away with the step that Cas takes backward. That all-powerful look has left his eyes as well, almost like it was just a dream, except Dean knows it wasn’t because Cas is still pitching a tent as tall as anything. “Huh?” Dean says dumbly.

“Sam is coming.”

“Huh?” Dean says again.

But sure enough, one moment there’re footsteps in the hallway and the next Sam is rounding the corner through the doorway and down into the kitchen, completely oblivious to the moment he just ruined. The railing that Dean was about to get. Because apparently, Cas has always wanted to take him in the kitchen. Dean huffs a deep breath, like somehow meditation is gonna get the blood from his dick back to his brain.

“Something smells good,” Sam says as he walks to the stove and peers into the pot of tomato sauce. He dips the wooden spoon that’s still sitting there on the counter into it, pulling it out with just enough sauce to taste, before sipping it off and licking his lips. His head tilts to the side. “Did you season this at all?” he asks.

Dean’s gonna kill him. He means it this time. He’s actually going to kill him.

The only thing that keeps him from homicide is Cas sneaking back to his side when Sam turns to further investigate the sauce. He kisses Dean on the cheek like a love token. “Later,” he says gentle. Not like a threat or a promise, but just like a reminder. They have later. Dean nods and Sam is very, very lucky to not be losing his status as alive on planet Earth for the time being.

…

It’s probably saying something about how online Dean’s mental facilities are, the fact that there’s a classic 70s episode of Scooby-Doo playing on the TV, part of some retro marathon happening on the cartoon channel because it’s midnight so no actual children are watching, just restless adults, but Dean hasn’t taken in a single word of it. Scooby’s yammering on, Shaggy’s teeth are chattering in fear, and the other three members of the gang are looking for clues or something. Dean’s pretty sure they’re in a swamp somewhere? The monster could be an actual crocodile for all that Dean cares.

It’s easy to ignore the way he’s a little bit hard like an afterthought, like he has been all damn evening since Cas pinned him down in the kitchen, but it’s much harder to ignore the ache in his chest. Nervous and frightened, a touch of love there off to the side. He reaches up to massage the tension from the back of his neck to stop himself from rubbing at his sternum, like the pressure of his hand there would be able to ease the tightness. All he wants to do is hide.

You’ve had enough hiding, Cas had said earlier. But, no, no, Dean thinks he could carefully cover every inch of himself for the rest of his life and not have hidden enough. That curtain is there for a reason. He’s already learned the cruel lessons of how to do it alone, hyper-independence becoming a comfort even at its most burdensome because at least it’s consistent, and for the third time in the last twelve minutes Dean thinks about tracking Cas down and calling this whole thing off.

Dean doesn’t need anything. Hell, there’s been times in the past few years that he barely felt like he needed food or oxygen. A wax figure of a person going through the motions of agony in order to save innocent lives, and then put that track on repeat.

And independent little boys and stray dogs and wax figures don’t know what they’re missing out on because they’ve never had it, so how could they ever need it.

Two minutes left. Dean’s chest hurts. He’s been watching the clock more than he’s been watching the TV. Thirteen minutes ago he and Cas had been sitting in the recliners together, and an hour before that Cas had sidled up to Dean and said lowly, “Wait until Sam goes to bed. Are you tired, or do you think you can stay up for that long?” Asked with genuine concern for Dean.

Dean had blinked. “Yeah, yeah, I can stay up.”

They’d been watching the Scooby-Doo marathon together up until thirteen minutes ago when Cas had suddenly looked over at Dean and said, “Sam has gone to his room for the night,” before standing up with a sort of purpose that’s out of place past 11 o'clock. Dean had sat up a little straighter in his recliner, ready to rise and follow Cas even though he wasn’t entirely sure what the plan was, before Cas rounded on him and ran one of those big hands through Dean’s hair in an affectionate gesture. “You wait here for now. Wait exactly fifteen minutes and then come meet me in your bedroom.”

The words held Dean by the throat like a necklace. When he just stared up at Cas without saying anything, Cas had asked, “Is that alright?”

“Okay,” Dean choked.

Cas’s hand had caressed Dean’s skull for just a second longer before he pulled away and disappeared out of the Dean Cave door. That had been when the clock read 12:14, and now it reads 12:29, and the pressure in Dean’s chest may as well be a lead balloon. He forces himself to stand anyway and tries to remind himself that he’s about to be walking towards what may as well be a birthday gift come early, not his own demise.

Why is that harder? Why is punishment more approachable than a blessing is?

Don’t answer that.

But deep down, in that place inside of himself that he curls up and hides in, he wants this so badly that he wouldn’t dare hope too much for it. Maybe that’s why it’s so scary. Suddenly, it’s almost like he wants to run through the hallways to get to Cas and say Please, please, you didn’t change your mind, did you? He’s so lost in the thought that he doesn’t realize that he’s already walked himself halfway there. His heart pounds and he wants this and he’s so scared of it and his boots clomp a little on the ground where he’s practically jogging the rest of the way to his bedroom.

When he gets there the door is closed so he knocks on it. Dean clears his throat, “Cas, it’s me,” he calls through the wood.

“Come in,” he hears Cas say.

One more moment of terrifying, hopeful anticipation before Dean is turning the knob and pushing the door open. When he closes it behind himself it’s a thoughtless action because all of his attention is on the three pillar candles Cas has lit around the room- one on top of Dean’s dresser, one on Dean’s desk, and the last on the little table Dean has right beside the door- and to Cas himself. Cas, who stands in front of Dean looking like- like a man. He’s taken off his trenchcoat, his blazer, and his tie, though none of them are anywhere to be seen in Dean’s room, with his white dress shirt still buttoned all the way up except for the very top button that holds the collar in place. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows thoughtfully, neat creased folds, showing off that one vein in his forearm that Dean could stare at for hours for no reason in particular. If this weren’t Cas, Dean would almost think he could imagine the smell of the cologne a man that looked like this would be wearing.

“Hello,” Cas says. Handsome as anything when the candlelight catches him.

“Hey.” Dean is completely out of his fucking depth here.

But Cas’s face falls and he’s squinting at Dean as he walks closer. “Is everything alright?”

And it’s not that Dean means to lie on purpose, just that when it comes to that exact question, he lies on habit. “Yeah, ‘course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You seem apprehensive. When you walked in you scanned the room like you were looking for a threat even though, as far as I’m aware, there are no outside threats that we’re currently dealing with to lead you to do so.”

Dean blushes at being caught. “You noticed all of that?”

“Yes.”

“How come?”

“I like noticing you,” Cas says as though it’s simple. “I love you very much.”

“Right. You- you love me very much.”

“I do,” Cas confirms. He tilts his head at Dean, a thoughtful little expression. “We don’t have to do any of this, Dean. I’ll blow the candles out. We’ll go to bed together like we normally do.”

Dean pokes his tongue around in his mouth as he looks down at his boots. “It’s not that,” he says finally. “I mean, it totally is, but it’s that I’m thinking- I’m feeling sort of… exposed. I guess. Kind of terrified. Kind of nervous. Pretty horny.”

When he finally looks up, Cas is looking at him with soft humor that relieves some of the tension from Dean’s shoulders, even though his chest is just as tight as it has been.

“What I’ve found in my time of- of learning how to feel, and then falling in love with you, is that nervousness is not always the dangerous animal it seems to be at first glance.”

“What… What is it then?” He knows his eyes are wide, knows he looks vulnerable, and there aren’t many other people he’d show this side of himself to other than Cas.

“Sometimes it is just a different, sly form of excitement.” Cas steps close to Dean, watches his expression for something that Dean doesn’t understand, before ultimately Cas’s eyes flick down to Dean’s mouth and stay there like a physical touch. Dean holds his breath. In his periphery he sees Cas’s arm moving, and it’s the only warning he gets before he feels Cas’s hand press gently, firmly, to his cock through his jeans. The breath Dean had been holding stutters out of him in surprise and pleasure. “Are you excited by me, Dean?”

Dean squeaks.

Cas’s face has turned serious, morphing back to that same expression he wore in the kitchen earlier. The holy type. “Moments of intimacy are easy when you’re the one deciding fates. When you are the one with the hand on the tap, deciding when it turns off and when it turns on- what you let out and what you keep to yourself.” Then, he almost whispers, “It is much more frightening when someone else is deciding the intimacy for you. Even something as simple as being touched,” Cas’s fingers move around Dean’s cock and he gasps, “is one less thing that you are in control of.”

Then he stops talking and he’s just standing there, hand still on Dean’s body, but he’s looking into Dean’s eyes like he’s waiting for something.

Dean swallows heavily. “It’s like- It’s like I need to be in control, even though I want to not be. My brain is so hardwired into it ‘cause I’ve always been the one keeping myself alive. Keeping Sam alive. If I didn’t have control… I had nothing.”

“No safety,” Cas guesses.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees.

“You’d have to trust someone very much then, to give them the control you usually rely on to keep yourself safe.”

Cas's gaze is purposeful now, waiting ever so patiently for Dean to come to some conclusion. And Dean thinks about yesterday, can still picture the way Cas had stuck his hand out and taken a blade through his palm like it was nothing. Right there in front of Dean’s heart. The moment that started this whole thing, that pulled back Dean’s meticulously stitched hiding curtain to reveal a bomb inside of him ticking away after its fuse got lit by his adoration.

Now it’s his jaw that ticks. “I would.” Then, “I do.”

This makes Cas nod. He takes his hand off of Dean’s dick but he steps closer to Dean still, reaching up to take Dean by the shoulders and move him back a few inches until his spine hits the closed door behind him. Just like earlier in the kitchen, he pins Dean into place with only his energy and the implied weight of his body that barely touches Dean at all.

“I love you,” Cas says, almost severe with how resolute he is at the moment. “Will you let me control you?”

The tightness in Dean’s chest finally gives, just like that, apparently only waiting for permission to be able to loosen itself. Maybe it’s even been that tight for longer than just this evening. He tips his head back against the door, looks at Cas through his eyelashes and lets his heart start to escape him when his voice breaks over the syllable, “Yes.”

“Thank you, Dean,” Cas says so sincerely that Dean isn’t sure what to do with it before he drops to his knees at Dean’s feet. Immediately, Dean’s dick is even more interested, but Cas isn’t reaching for Dean’s zipper, at least not yet, he’s reaching for the laces of Dean’s boots, tugging on the bow of them first before loosening the laces with gentle patience.

Oh Christ. Dean looks up at the ceiling and he pretends that it’s because the ceiling is really interesting and not that it's the only way to keep the tears from coming out of his eyes. That Cas, this strong man, this creature who loves him is- is- It’s already too vulnerable.

Dean steadies his voice and tries to sound nonchalant when he says, “Don’t have to do that, Cas. I can take my own shoes off.”

“I’m in charge,” Cas reminds him absentmindedly, a little fond even, where he finally slides Dean’s left boot off, taking the sock with it, and setting them both to the side. He kisses Dean’s kneecap through his jeans before he moves to the right boot.

And Dean’s lip quivers even as he laughs. “Right. Right, sorry.”

The right boot comes off to be put beside the left, and again Cas leaves a kiss on Dean’s kneecap before he rises to stand at his full height. Dean’s t-shirt is next to go where he lifts his arms to allow Cas to peel it off of him. Then, finally, the jeans, which Cas unbuttons with little fanfare before helping Dean step out of them and kick them to the side.

“There,” Cas says. He thumbs at the waistband of Dean’s boxer briefs. “These can stay for the moment.” Looking up all the way to meet Dean’s eyes, he adds, “May I give you a kiss?”

“I thought you were in charge.”

“Not like that.”

At his sides, Dean’s hands shake. “You can kiss me. But just- just a little one, okay? I like it when…”

“You like it when what?”

“When you make me feel- When you treat me like I’m real fragile.” Dean tenses as soon as the words leave his mouth.

But Cas replies, “Things that are fragile are usually precious.” When he kisses Dean it is just a tender thing before he pulls away again. The respect of it leaves Dean’s stomach warm enough that he almost misses Cas saying, “Tonight, you do not have to be strong, Dean. I will be strong, and you will be precious. Would you come over and get onto the bed for me? On your back.”

When Dean nods, Cas takes a step backward to free him, and they walk towards Dean’s bed together. Dean shuffles up on it, pulling his pillow to sit under his head while he clasps his hands over his tummy because it feels like the right place to put them. To his surprise, Cas doesn’t join him, instead pulling the chair from Dean’s desk over so that it’s a few inches away from the mattress’s edge, perpendicular to Dean’s body.

It quite literally feels like a frying pan hitting Dean over the head when the next words out of Cas’s mouth are, “I’m assuming you know what roleplaying is?”

Dean’s mouth falls open. Stuttering, “Uh- Yeah, yeah Cas. I know what roleplaying is. Do… you know what roleplaying is?”

For just a moment, Cas shoots him this smallest, bitchiest little look that makes Dean bite back a laugh threatening to burst from him. He relaxes into the mattress. Oh yeah. That’s still his Cas alright.

His Cas who says, “I was thinking about what you told me earlier in the kitchen. How you’d like to be treated, and as a result, how you would like to feel. I believe that what you’re searching for is- is a fantasy. Not that it’s any less real, but if you’re too connected to here, to now, you become so aware of yourself and your hardships that they’re almost impossible to put down. As you were telling me just now, your need for control is part of the way you keep yourself safe. It’s not inherently a bad thing, but it makes it much harder to fulfill those parts of you that require something more… precious.”

“So what are you saying?”

“What if you were not Dean Winchester?” Cas raises an eyebrow at him. “What if there was never any Righteous Man or Savior of the Free World or even Sam’s protector? What if, for this next hour, you were a singular version of a man named Dean? And what if I was never Cas, a part of the larger equation where you were forced to realize that the stories you had been told your entire life about forgiveness and love in Heaven had been a lie? Instead, I was Castiel. Only Castiel. And I was truly what angels are supposed to be, guardians and protectors of the human race?”

Dean squints his eyes. “Role playing as ourselves?”

“Different versions of ourselves. Ones that don’t need to be so literal. You like that I’m an angel, or at least it seems that way. And maybe you would like it if the things I sometimes shy away from because of my background were more apparent. That I have lived for millions of years, that I have seen evolution, that I know every language human beings have ever spoken. That my trueform is the size of a human skyscraper and even in this body you see me in now, I can take a blade through my hand or bullet to my heart without feeling a thing. I am very big, Dean. And I love you. All of those things are true about me exactly as I am now, but they are also attributes that are complicated by what I have been through with Heaven. But they are things, I think,” the corner of Cas’s lip ticks up in a smile, “I would like very much, if they were being used to bring pleasure to you.”

Now Dean’s dick is definitely, definitely part of this conversation again. He nibbles at his bottom lip and looks from across the fabric of his pillowcase and says, “So it’s us without the baggage.”

“That’s the idea.” Cas leans in. “I think that Castiel would take very good care of Dean. And I think that maybe even someone as wonderful and brave as Dean Winchester needs permission to just be Dean sometimes. What do you think?”

Well, here’s the thing. Dean has always known he bagged a keeper with Cas from an outside perspective. Handsome, eloquent, loyal, good with his hands in more ways than one. And from the inside, too, where Dean’s love grows from, vining its way between Cas’s fingers to hold him like that, like something natural and from the soil. But sometimes Dean forgets just how damn smart Cas is.

“I think,” Dean says slowly, “that I’d love to hear about how we met, Castiel.”

Apparently Dean is also prone to forgetting just how ridiculous and sincere Cas can be, because he wears this genuine smile at Dean’s words before he steadies himself again, closing his eyes and saying with complete earnesty, “One moment, let me get into character.” When he hears Dean chuckle he adds, “You need to get into character, too, Ordinary Human Named Dean.”

“Right, ‘course,” Dean agrees and closes his own eyes even though the corner of his mouth is still hitching higher. Such a goddamn stickler for the rules that Cas is usually so fond of breaking.

It’s nice to breathe together in the quiet like this. The candles are just bright enough to turn the insides of Dean’s eyelids pink, and he stares into the rosy flesh of it and wonders what it would be like to be ordinary. Normal. He wonders if he would have grown up in a suburb, this alternate version of himself, but that feels so far off from the core of him that he dismisses the idea immediately. Maybe Mom still died and Dad was still absent, but instead of growing up in motel rooms, he and Sam grew up with Bobby and Karen. It’s like a dream once removed from himself, how possible it feels, imagining falling asleep to the smell of old wood, car grease, and floral perfume before waking up to the smell of pancakes on a Sunday morning.

Growing up in one place and going to school where he made friends, had a girlfriend or two. Maybe even kissed a boy under the bleachers, something that he never told anybody but Karen about. Sam still goes to Stanford. Dean’s still lonely in a way that happens when you lose a parent too soon, when you lose your father at the same time even though he’s still alive, but it's manageable. Maybe he still has a hard time trusting but damn does he want to.

He doesn’t think he’d end up in college. Smart enough for it, good grades, but he always liked working with his hands too much. He ends up helping Bobby run the junkyard instead, fixing up old things that need love like Dean does. In the summertime, he’d go out at night and work through the early hours because the night felt warm like an old friend, and he’d look up at the stars in the sky and for one fleeting moment he’d think, Is there something more out there? Something bigger than me? Because maybe no matter what universe Dean is in, he always ends up putting others first. His own needs become backburner invisible and he knows how to protect everybody other than himself. Feeling like an open wound all the time. Feeling like ever since Mom died all he knew how to do was poke the bleeding and then run away from it. Just wanting someone to be there-

There’s a rustle in the bedroom. It’s like a flock of doves taking off. Dean jumps as he snaps his eyes open, heart beating inexplicably quickly in his chest at the startle. Cas is standing over him except it’s not Cas, is it? It’s- It’s a stranger, a man, dressed in office attire and looking entirely too comfortable to be standing in someone else’s bedroom.

“Who-?!”

“Do not be afraid,” Cas says. He holds his body in rigid, masculine lines, and he looks at Dean with a gaze that doesn’t even falter for a blink. “I won’t hurt you.”

“Don’t be afraid, my ass, man. How the hell did you get into my room?” He feels like that’s what he’s supposed to say, you know, about finding a random man in his bedroom. This is kinda fun actually. Feels like local theater improv.

“If I told you, you would not believe me. Besides, it’s not of import. I’ve been waiting a very long time to meet you, Dean.”

“Like that’s comforting.”

Cas- This man- tilts his head at Dean now, his eyes squinting in a way that’s both considering and almost… warm. “You’re not how I thought you’d be.”

The words make Dean freeze, and he feels his character slip. Feels himself be exactly himself, uncomfortable with his soft stomach, wanting to fold in around it at Cas’s tone.

“How’m I supposed to be then?” he asks back, gruff.

But Cas is unphased apparently, or maybe he doesn’t pick up on the way Dean’s stray dog teeth growl out of habit at all. “It’s a beautiful thing, that even with as much as I have seen, there are still wonders beyond my comprehension. I know how the flowers are pollinated, and I have witnessed every bee, every bundle of pollen, every stigma, but you are like a dream.”

“I don’t understand,” Dean croaks for himself and for the Ordinary Human Named Dean.

“I know you look at the stars,” Cas says gently. “At night, when you’re out there with the broken down vehicles and the crickets. Even though the sun is gone, the humidity makes you sweat. I hear you calling out to me when you ask the Heavens for answers. You have your father, Bobby, and you have his wife, Karen, and of course you have Sam, but… there is a love inside of you that is too big for them and you don’t know where to put it down, sometimes.”

It’s so real, the way Cas’s words make Dean feel even as he knows they’re referencing a fantasy of his own making. Still, still, his chin shivers. “Who are you?” he calls out as quietly as he’d call out to his imaginary stars.

“My name is Castiel. I’m an angel.”

Dean asks, “You are?”

Castiel breathes in deeply through his nose before sitting back down on the wooden seat he had stood from earlier. He folds his hands in his lap, looking for all the world like he is somehow both relaxed and ready for conflict that could arise at any given minute, like he is so sure of his own capabilities that he doesn’t need to do something as civilian as worry about them.

Finally, he breaks the quiet. “This universe is large, infinitely expansive,” Cas says with deep and wonderful eyes that meet Dean’s. So bright. How does he do that? Turn it on and off like that, the power in him? “It can be- terrifying if you let it. The vastness of all things. But when the matter around you, both time and space, stretches into this wideness, it dwarfs everything in comparison.”

The cadence of Cas’s voice is welcoming like the light off of that orange flickering candle that’s reflecting in Cas’s irises. And Dean knows where this is going, thinks he knows where this is going, yet the impact is still just as damning when Castiel finishes, “Do not be afraid of these big things, Dean. They only mean that you are small.”

“Small,” Dean repeats back because he’s breathless and he doesn’t know what else to say.

“And small still next to me. Do you understand what it means, to be small? It means that it is much easier to hold you. In my true form, I could easily cradle your entire body in my palm. You could rest there. Perhaps even use the flesh at the base of my thumb as a pillow. Doesn’t that sound agreeable?”

You have no idea, Dean thinks. But all he can manage is a quiet, “Yeah.”

“To think that the same smallness that makes you vulnerable also allows you to be protected. You see, I’ve been protecting you. I’ve been watching over you, little one.”

Oh. Dean’s body is wracked in a shiver so intense that he physically shudders under his covers. Little one, like Dean is being cared for, like- like he doesn’t have to have all of the control anymore. Someone else to make sure he’s safe and to love him. Chills that send goosebumps from the base of his neck all the way down his arms, to the tops of his thighs, where he can feel the skin tighten up right beside his dick twitching. The very visible reaction is a little bit embarrassing, cause he knows there’s no way Cas missed that.

“You have?” And is that really Dean’s voice? That sweet, trusting tone to it? He wants to be embarrassed, and, actually, he is, but any of his run-of-the-mill internalized shame is cut off by Cas’s reply.

“For millions of years, I crafted stars and planets. I filled the universe with what it would become, so that there was never a lonely comet or a friendless moon, and it was good work. It was work that had to be done. And then, after millions of years of this galactic artistry, something truly wonderful happened.”

“What- uh- what was it?”

“I was told that I had other work to do. Small work, much smaller, but somehow much more important. A star was nothing but burning gas, while this…” Cas trails off and doesn’t finish the sentence, just nods his head to himself. He holds Dean’s eyes as he finishes, “Much more important, indeed.”

“The… watching over me?”

Cas smiles with genuine affection, tiny at the pulling corners of his lips but no less honest for it. Maybe even more honest because it’s more Cas than a wide-tooth grin ever could be. He’s so good to Dean for doing this, for everything. Letting Dean turn his exhausted brain off for just a little bit while Cas weaves them a new and impossible story. It’s so much kinder than the one they lived through to get here.

“I still remember that moment, when I was told there was a soul that had been crafted by the universe itself that needed tending to. A soul that required the protection of a shepherd. And so I accepted the crook more gratefully and with more honor than I had felt in my millions of years of creation. Of course, Dean, that soul was you.”

The candle on the desk gives off little muffled crackles every now and then. Its light catches in Cas’s hair and eyelashes and makes him glow. It makes him look as otherworldly as he truly is, as he truly claims to be at this moment. If Dean put his conscious memories down for just a second, it wouldn’t be all that hard to believe Cas’s claim. Maybe Dean wants to believe it.

It feels so good to be taken care of.

Without thinking he bunches some of the fabric of his comforter up where it lays under him, kneading it between his fingers. “You’ve been protecting me? From- from the not so good stuff.”

“I watched you through the years and kept you from harm, from things that would hurt you irreversibly. I would never allow it. Not with the oppressive gaze of a watchguard, but the tender gaze of a friend, of a lover. I cared for you so dearly, little one, from afar. And now I finally get to meet you.”

“Why? What do you-” Dean starts, embarrassed and needy- “What do you want with me?”

The blue of Cas’s gaze gets gobbled up by his pupils then, a hungry sort of look that Dean has seen plenty of times before but never to this extent, where Cas is not a man but a creature capable of massive, terrifying, lovely emotions that are fueled by millions of years of wisdom. Dean likes that Cas is smarter than him. Dean likes that Cas is bigger than him.

“I want to love you until you are hedonistically full in all ways that fullness is possible.”

Dean’s breath sticks inside of him and clogs the roof of his mouth. “I-”

“You think too hard,” Cas interrupts. Before Dean can frown at him, he continues, “Close your eyes.” Cas leans in just a few inches closer and holds Dean’s gaze. “Close your eyes, little one. Trust me.”

Dean is so gone on him. A sponge soaking it all up, the orange light and the blue eyes, until Dean is drenched heavy. He’s weighed down into the bed by the static of grace in the air. “Yeah. Okay.”

His eyelids close in burgundy curtains at the end of a ballet, but this isn’t the end at all. The lines of his body are held tense in anticipation until Cas says, “Relax. There’s nothing to fear. I’m here to protect you. I’m here to make sure you are cared for and safe, Dean. Do you understand?”

Opening his mouth, no words come out, so Dean settles on nodding instead. The movement makes a noise against the fabric of his pillowcase where the stubble on the side of his jaw drags up and down against it.

“Do you trust me?”

Again, Dean nods slowly. There’s an unknown anticipation curling in his gut now. It draws down to where he shuffles nervous feet against the cotton sheets.

“I want you to turn over onto your stomach now.”

Dean breathes into his nose, letting the oxygen buoy him by his lungs as he holds it inside of himself. He pushes himself up with a bend at his elbows, the weight of him making divots into his memory foam mattress. His eyes keep closed. It feels terrifyingly intimate to move without his sight, knowing that Cas is watching him back. The tingles of it- of the way he likes this scary, too-much feeling- start at the base of his neck and have barely started to recede by the time he turns over fully and settles onto his front.

“Where-” Dean hesitates with a lick of his lips because he feels sort of stupid asking for directions even though he wants them. “Where do you want me to put my arms?”

When Cas responds, “Wherever you find most comfortable,” Dean reaches up to wrap his pillow between his forearms, curling his fingers into the give of it and using the new lumps he’s created to form a rest for his chin. Castiel continues, “That’s very good.

Before Dean can choke out an answer, he’s relieved of having to think of a response to Cas’s praise when he hears the chair Cas is sitting on squeak. He can practically see Cas moving in his mind’s eye just from piecing together the sounds of the seat cushion expanding and the scuff of Cas’s dress shoe against the floor. Castiel is getting closer. It’s a hypothesis that’s proven true when Cas speaks again from only a foot or so away.

“May I touch you?” Cas asks, voice like corduroy fabric.

Dean answers with a nod into his pillow.

With that, he feels a hand come down to lay warm and broad at the top of his bare back, just between his shoulder blades. Even knowing it was going to happen, the contact makes Dean tense in surprise before he relaxes down into the mattress again.

Cas starts rubbing his back. It’s nice. Just nice. These long, petting motions that begin up by Dean’s neck and then trail to his tailbone, stopping just above his boxers before starting from scratch again at his nape. If Dean weren’t so wired, he bets he could fall asleep like this. Nothing but a memory of him in his memory foam. Ha.

“There, that’s it,” Cas says.

The next stroke of it goes lower. Castiel’s hand spreads out wide and cups over the swell of Dean’s ass through his boxers, just a broad sort of movement before it’s gone. Dean’s breath stutters. It happens again, a downsweep of Castiel’s palm that traverses past the valley that the small of Dean’s back makes and over the mountain of his ass. This time Castiel’s fingerpads press into the flesh there. A moment of pause- the heat and weight of Castiel’s hand growing heavier on the thin cotton covering Dean up.

“Are you still comfortable when I do this?”

“Yes,” Dean breathes. Eyes closed. Eyes closed. “You can keep- Will you keep going?”

Castiel’s exhale is on Dean’s ear when he says, hushed, “There’s no need to ask for anything when I am here, Dean.” Lips that are soft and dry trace the shell down to the lobe until Dean has to restrain himself from bringing his shoulders up around his neck at the tickle of it. “No need to request, no need to beg, because I will deliver unto you everything you desire. I know it all, little one. I know how to touch you. How to please you.”

With those words, Castiel’s hand moves down lower over Dean’s ass, a move that stills him with anticipation, until it's between his legs instead, where Cas’s knuckles rub gently against the underside of Dean’s balls through the boxers from this upside down angle. It’s so damn- private- that part of Dean. He whimpers. Feels exposed and keeps his legs open anyway while Cas’s fingers work in circles.

“How to love you,” Castiel finishes. “And I love you so fiercely.”

With those words, his hand climbs back over Dean’s ass to the waistband of his boxers where the bump of his knuckles catches on the elastic as his fingers creep in. One of those long fingers, Dean doesn’t know which, pushes down against his hole, dry finger pad putting pressure there. It doesn’t slip inside, it just teases him where he’s sensitive. Dean's hips twitch up at the sensation.

“Does that feel good?” Cas asks him in a tone that almost feels condescending with how clearly Cas already knows the answer.

Weirdly, even that does something for Dean. He gulps. “Yeah.”

“I like that you let me touch you here,” Castiel confesses into the shell of Dean’s ear. Then the pressure of his finger is gone, Cas taking his whole hand out of Dean’s underwear while he says, “There are other places I want to touch you, too.”

“Fucking Christ-” Dean mutters under his breath, eyes still closed even though his eyebrows are to his hairline. It’s so wickedly sexy. Has him pretending that he’s not wiggling his hips around a little bit for friction like a teenager humping the mattress.

But oh no, nothing gets by Cas, and it certainly doesn’t get past Castiel.

“You have so many nerve endings, everywhere. Humans are miraculous like that,” Castiel says. “There is no shame in being eager. Take what you want.” That same warm hand is on Dean’s skin again, cradling the small of his back and staying there. It pushes as if to guide, and the way it forces Dean’s dick further into the mattress has him biting back a gasp. “I’ll help you. You don’t have to do it all by yourself.”

On the next push of Castiel’s hand, Dean moans at the friction. It’s so different from the sex he and Cas usually have. Every movement is too slow to produce sweat, so the bed sheets under Dean are warm from his body heat and nothing else. He feels like he just rolled out of the fluff cycle of a dryer, staticy, rumpled up but clean at the same time. His dick is heavy between his thighs and Cas’s hand is so heavy on his back that it feels like a miracle. The same hand leads Dean into another grind of his hips that he goes with happily, moaning again at the rhythm Castiel is building for him.

“That’s wonderful. You are so wonderful. If I tell you a few words, do you think you could repeat them for me?”

“Yeah, Cas.”

“Castiel,” the angel corrects gently, and he’s an angel, and as much as he’s telling Dean a story of fiction right now, a lot of it isn’t fiction at all.

Dean mouths wet at the pillowcase when he corrects himself, “Yes, Castiel.”

“I’d like you to say, I’m being taken care of.”

“I’m- I’m being taken care of.”

“I don’t have to think, I just have to be.”

Oh, Dean’s head is doing something funny now. Parts of him that he usually keeps so well hidden are slotting into notches he didn’t even know he had, while his usually rampant paranoia is leaking from his ears. The blood in his body is circulating like it’s excited to be here for the show, gathering in his crotch, with just enough left in his toes that he can knead them against the mattress at the foot of the bed. He doesn’t have to think. “I just have to be,” he practically slurs.

“Tell me, You’re big so that I can be small.”

“You’re big.” Dean’s cock rubs against the friction of his boxers just right with the next press of Castiel’s hand, and he chokes out the words, “I’m small.”

“Mmmm. And not just small, Dean, you are my sheep.” Castiel says it so kindly, so without ego or malice. His free hand caresses the nape of Dean’s neck before massaging it in an easy hold while the hand on the small of Dean’s back keeps its steady rhythm of guidance. Having both of Castiel’s hands on him is like being hooked to the perfect feedback loop, like being tied up in ropes that are secure instead of binding. “You are my flock, and I am your shepherd. How does that sound? How does it feel to know that no matter what you do, or where you go, you are without blame? That I will come to you and corral you, and that the humble lamb need not know its own holiness in order to be holy. Dean, beautiful thing, you don’t need to know anything at all. I know enough for both of us now.”

“I want it,” he confesses like big, wet tears. Like Castiel’s gentle hands are carefully unstitching him.

“In this entire universe, you are my flock of one, and I love you in massive, infinite ways that are not yours to comprehend, but are yours to receive.”

Dean sobs a dry noise at the words that he hears and that sit like a blanket over his brain that keeps it from firing, keeps him from being afraid. It feels so good and he doesn’t think at all. “Please.”

“I’ve told you, darling lamb, you don’t need to beg. I have you. Be still for a moment, I’ll help you. You’re just going to feel better and better.” And so Dean goes still, goes quiet, trusts entirely that Castiel is there even when his hands pull away and leave Dean colder for it. “Let’s turn over again now. Can you move to lay on your back for me?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean mumbles as he’s quick to comply with Castiel’s directing.

Once he’s on his back, the image of Castiel hanging over him is like a miracle. Dean watches as those tan fingers start to unbutton the white dress shirt adorning Cas’s torso, starting from the top and then working down so that his chest is revealed inch by inch. Dean holds onto his breath like he’s holding onto a secret as his eyes track the movements that eventually free Castiel from his shirt altogether. He tosses it to the ground.

“Wow,” Dean finds himself saying.

Castiel looks down at him with a smile. “Does the sight of me impress you?”

“I- Yeah.”

“Yes?”

Dean nods rapidly.

When Castiel reaches down to undo the buckle of his belt, pulling the metal tab free from its notch, he stares at Dean the entire time, pinning him down with just the gaze. Dean’s cock twitches in his boxers and Castiel must notice because his pointed look goes from Dean’s face to Dean’s crotch. Having Castiel know how aroused he is is embarrassing on some level. Small and human. Like part of him wants to reach down and cover himself up to stop Castiel from seeing his need. He’s doing it without really thinking, both of his hands forming a cover over his clothed erection.

Looking back up from the cocoon he’s made, Dean finds Castiel watching his face again with curiosity in his expression. Dean can’t explain why it makes him blush and get harder. Castiel drops his now loosened belt to the ground but forgoes undoing his pants in favor of moving close again.

“There’s no need to be shy in front of your shepherd, Dean. I’m going to take such good care of you. Including right here,” he reaches out to remove the loose cage of Dean’s hands and Dean lets him without putting up a fight. He watches with a hot helplessness in his stomach when Castiel tugs his boxers off entirely to fully reveal his arousal to the room. His dick is red and hard against his stomach. “Oh, look at this beautiful cock you have. Don’t you? Isn’t this such a pretty part of you for me to tend to? Play with. You’re my sheep, aren’t you, Dean?”

Dean nods again. “Yeah- Yeah, I am.”

“Mhmm, yes you are. My sheep are so safe with me that their heads just go empty. They can’t help it. They don’t need to think about anything other than their shepherd’s hands making them feel pleasure. I keep you healthy in the pastures, darling lamb, and I come around every single day to treat you. To touch you when you’re hard. And my darling lamb’s brain is so quiet. Just lets me touch him wherever I want because he trusts his shepherd so much, and why wouldn’t he? Every touch feels so good.”

The words send Dean down a river. Somewhere far away. He wants to be in the pasture with his shepherd, he wants his shepherd to touch him everywhere. Against his stomach his dick bobs and leaks and it should be obscene, it is obscene, but it doesn’t belong to Dean anymore. Dean doesn’t even belong to Dean. It’s soft on his heart like paradise.

His eyelids flutter as his eyes roll before they focus on Castiel’s deep blue stare again.

“S-Shepherd?” Dean asks in a daffodil voice. “You’re my shepherd?”

Castiel smiles at him and it feels like touching the stars above the junkyard. “That’s right. I am your shepherd. And you are my lamb.”

Dean looks down at his wet dick. “I think- I’m- I need-”

“Shh. I know. Can you be patient for me? Keep your hands right there by your sides, and be still for me. I’m going to finish undressing.”

It’s a good thing that Castiel doesn’t seem to need a response, because Dean isn’t so sure he could figure out what to say. He just does as his shepherd had instructed, laying in silence and watching Castiel uncover his strong thighs, the knobs of his knees, before stepping from his boxers to show his pink cock. He gives it a firm stroke with his hand and lets his fingers linger on the wet head before he lets it go again.

Dean looks at those fingers and wants them. Castiel takes a step forward and to the side so that he stands directly over Dean’s head and Dean has to crane his neck back against the pillow to look up at him. He holds his hand, his fingers, up to Dean’s mouth.

“It’s alright. You can try.” Dean doesn’t need to be told twice before he sticks his tongue out to lap at Castiel’s fingertips that taste like salt and musk and sex. He moans.

After a moment, Castiel takes his hand away before kneeing up onto the mattress to the side of Dean’s body. The fit of the both of them side-by-side is tight, and Dean wonders what Castiel will do before his question is answered in the form of Castiel straddling his lap. Their cocks brush for just a glance, both of them too hard to actually lay together, but even that minute contact has Dean gasping.

“Calm and content and thoughtless. That’s right, darling lamb. I love you. I want you to be honest with your shepherd, I would never want to cause you any distress, so tell me if what I do next is too much. Can you do that for me, little one?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s my good sheep. Here,” and then Castiel is reaching down to grab hold of both of Dean’s arms and reposition them closer to the sides of his body, flat on the mattress. Then, Castiel raises one of his knees and uses the weight of it to pin Dean’s forearm down before repeating the action on the other side as well. Using only his body weight, he holds Dean immobile entirely. “How does it feel when I keep you like this?’

A groan leaks into the air from Dean’s chest, as light as a feather. There are barely words inside of him. “I need it,” he says instead of answering Castiel’s question because his thoughts are far, far away, and he feels so perfect. “Shepherd, I need it, I need it, I need it-”

“Does my darling lamb love being helpless? Does he love being laid out under me? It’s such a tantalizing thought, isn’t it, that I’ve brought you in from the pastures to take care of you exactly how you need tended to, and you can’t move, can’t fear, can’t even think, isn’t that right?”

The shock of Castiel’s still free hands brushing over Dean’s nipples makes his body jolt so hard he almost bucks Castiel off of him. He whimpers when Castiel does it again. The touch is mild, not even the scratch of a fingernail, and it makes Dean’s breath huff. A direct line of pleasure from his chest that leads to his stomach that leads to his dick. Endless. And Castiel won’t stop. The feel of it overwhelms Dean to the point that he starts shuffling restlessly, tugging on his arms that won’t come free from under Castiel’s weight because habit tells him he needs his hands to protect himself from the onslaught.

“Shepherd,” Dean pleads brokenly. “So- so much-”

“Shhh. That’s right, it is so much, little sheep. You belong entirely to your shepherd, who only makes decisions for you out of love. Now be still while I help you. You must be so sensitive. I waited too long to care for you, I fear. All that pleasure built up inside of you with nowhere to go.” Castiel plucks Dean’s nipples between gentle fingers and Dean cries out. “My poor darling lamb. Tell me, Dean, tell me you are my darling lamb.”

“I’m your darling lamb.”

“Tell me again.”

“I’m your darling lamb.”

“Yes, you are. And you don’t have to fear anything at all because you belong to me.” Castiel pinches Dean’s nipples again and his eyes roll in his head. He can’t move under his shepherd. His body is so still. Trapped and pinned and held. “Oh, that’s perfect. Nice and quiet. So well-behaved.”

A moment of reprieve comes when one of Castiel’s hands disappears, but Dean can’t see where it goes. He just knows that the other hand is still on his chest, resting on his pec before pressure is laid on it as though Castiel is leaning forward. The weight of Castiel’s hips shift, too. Suddenly there’re fingers touching Dean’s dick and he doesn’t even have time to absorb the impact of arousal that it causes before Castiel is sitting down onto his erection.

All the breath leaves Dean’s body until he crumbles in on himself like a sinkhole in the middle of a park. He’s nothing but a body with nerves. A creature with no thoughts or shame, only influenced by the outside sensation of rapture. Castiel’s body is hot and tight around him, eased by some sort of lubricant that mysteriously appeared where they’ve joined.

“Oh.” The word bubbles up from Dean’s heart. He stares down the length of his body to where his arms are trapped to either side of him, then down further to where he disappears inside of Castiel’s body, hidden just there under Castiel’s own hard cock. “Oh my god.”

“Yes, I think I waited too long,” Castiel is saying above him but Dean is barely registering the words. His whole world has narrowed down to where his cock is buried to the hilt in his shepherd's body. “I should have been out in the pasture with you days ago, keeping your cock warm, to keep you from getting to these levels of desperation. You needed me, didn’t you sweet boy? I left you so sensitive and hard, waiting for your shepherd to relieve you. All those years of you looking up at the stars and waiting for me. I’m here now. I’ve learned my lesson. I need to be much more careful with such precious possessions, and even the most well-behaved sheep still need to breed, isn’t that right?”

Dean likes it when he tries to move his hands but can’t. The weight of Cas’s knees over his forearms is just different kinds of blankets, tethering Dean to a type of pleasure that boils low in his tummy and making absolutely certain that Dean is helpless.

“Uh-huh,” he finds himself saying through his molasses mouth.

When Castiel sits up it adds weight to Dean’s forearms, but the feel of it is nothing compared to the drag of Castiel’s body on his dick. Castiel lowers himself those last few inches again. When he goes to sit up, Dean’s hips snap to catch him and close the space. The sudden speed and friction is holy and he keeps chasing, can’t help it, where there’s so little give in the few inches between their bodies but Dean still tries to fuck in abandon anyway.

“Fuck,” he hissed, eyes screwed shut.

“That’s my good sheep. That’s it. It feels so good when your body takes what it needs, when your shepherd provides for you, doesn’t it. I’m going to make you perfect, Dean. Are you going to come in me?”

“Fuck! Please, please-”

“I’m so very patient, Dean. I’ll be right here. Ready to corral you. And next time, I’ll tie you up and breed you full, use you the way you crave to be used. A beautiful, precious sheep with nothing to worry about but the blue of the sky over him and the way his shepherd keeps him sated at all times- Never needing for anything- Always content- Loose and leaking my come so that he never forgets who he belongs to-”

The orgasm forever building in Dean’s stomach rips out of him, pouring into Castiel. There are tears in the corners of his eyes to match his sobbing breaths when his shepherd clenches around him.

“Thank you!” he whines and can’t shut himself up. It comes from his soul, deep inside of him, because you don’t feel pleasure like this unless someone loves you enough to get you there. Where this release is so ludicrously devastating, hedonistic, that it is impossible not to be grateful for it. “Thank you, shepherd. Oh Christ- Fuck- Fuck- Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

As he’s coming down he hears Castiel’s loving voice say, “You’re very welcome, Dean,” before the weight on top of him shifts so that Castiel can lean in to kiss Dean’s cheek. That’s really nice. When Castiel sits back up again, Dean stares.

It’s like now that he’s come, his brain switches its dial to a different radio station, playing some sort of lazy song with a thumping bass rhythm that makes him want to crawl. If he had enough thoughts in his soup of a head to be able to think at all, he’d assume coming until he cried would have straightened him back out again. Factory reset. Instead, he looks at Castiel’s leaking cock and he wants it so badly it feels like punishment to not be touching it.

His shepherd. He needs to thank his shepherd, worship him, be owned by him the way that he’s always supposed to have. When Dean reaches out a hand, though, Castiel takes him by the shaking wrist and brings it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to Dean’s knuckles. “Do not worry for me, Dean. My physical pleasure is of no consequence, I promise you, and you owe me nothing. You’re far away from me now. Let me bring you home safely.”

“No, I need it,” Dean pleads. His eyes water around panic, doesn’t know how to make Castiel understand how much Dean can’t be separated from this yet. Not finished. “You can’t- Please, I’m not done yet. I’m not done yet. I-”

Castiel cuts Dean’s anxiety in half when he folds down to wrap his arms around Dean’s torso, pulling him into an awkward hug. “I’m sorry. I misunderstood, that’s all. I know much but I don’t know everything, forgive me for causing you distress. That would never be my intention. Let’s breathe together, and then you can tell me what it is you need.”

The reassurance is enough to keep Dean from drowning. His lungs fill up with air at the same time that Castiel’s do so that they are two balloons bumping into each other in midair. Castiel’s skin is warm against Dean’s without sweat because angels don’t sweat, and Dean likes that a lot.

After five rounds of breathing, Castiel murmurs in Dean’s ear, “What is it that I can do for you?”

“I want…” The words feel hard to focus on, but there’s decidedly no pressure of performance so Dean continues to struggle out, “Want to… give you- let you be my- my shepherd and take whatever and me. Be good- be a good sheep for you.”

“You are,” Castiel’s lips are dry when they kiss Dean’s temple. “Beautiful human. You beautiful man, you are a wonderful flock of one. A flock that is still in need of corralling.” He pulls back, sitting upright again so he can look down at Dean with a tilt of his head. “Hmm, what am I to do with you?”

Dean just blinks up at him. Castiel smiles.

“Whatever I’d like. Whatever I want to take, so you’ve said. But what about you, lamb? What do you want?” Castiel’s fingers brush through Dean’s hair. “Would you like to say grace?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Uh-huh,” Castiel repeats back fondly.

He plucks at Dean’s hair for just a second longer before he’s climbing out of Dean’s lap, leaving Dean’s soft cock to slip from him and lay fragile against his own thigh. He watches with unfocused eyes as Castiel seems unperturbed by the new emptiness of his body, kneeing himself onto the mattress before extending a leg to the floor. Eventually, he stands next to the bed, hips right there beside Dean’s head, his dick hard and wet. Dean opens his mouth for it like some lost instinct from a past life. Saliva collects on his tongue.

When Castiel laughs at him, a kind yet rough noise, it makes Dean wish he weren’t soft.

“Eager.” And Dean hadn’t realized he’d fully stuck out his tongue until Castiel tapped a finger against it. “However, I believe it’d please us both to do this properly. There are rules for this sort of thing, after all. Do you think you can move?”

Dean starts by wiggling his toes first, then his fingers, moving the blood that has very recently left his dick into his limbs again. When he successfully bends both his knees and his elbows, he nods at Castiel.

“Very good. Take your time rising, little one, I’m in no hurry. I trust my flock to come to me no matter what, loyal to his shepherd. And whenever you are ready-” Dean watches Castiel reach behind himself to feel for the arm of the wooden desk chair he had been sitting in at the beginning of their story, and once he knows where it is he sits down in it. His cock swings back and forth for a moment before settling straight up against his tan stomach. Dean stares. “You may come before me on your knees to say grace.”

Well, if Dean had a single atom in his body that knew what embarrassment was, he might be embarrassed by the way he practically tumbles off of the bed to get to the floor. He’s barely conscious of himself enough to pull his impact at the last minute, saving his knees from some pretty nasty bruises that Castiel probably would have just healed anyway. But who needs embarrassment when there is no one here to hold space for it, not him or Castiel. And it’s sort of fun to imagine that Castiel really is a shepherd, dirt on his hands and on his pretty face from the very mortal work of looking after God’s creatures the old-fashioned way. Maybe they’re out in a pasture. Maybe Dean is down on his knees as Castiel leans his body weight back against the wooden fence that keeps Dean enclosed.

His eyelids are hooded, pupils locked in on Castiel’s erection, as he licks his lips and starts leaning in. His chest is loose, his heart ecstatic, stomach hot, for finally being able to perform the task he was born to do.

But oh- oh- a hand on his chin stops him. The fingers force him to look up to meet Castiel’s gaze which is warm with question. “You’ve clasped your hands behind your back. You don’t have to.”

Dean doesn’t know how to explain it. He nods his head, breathing hot air against Castiel’s bare thigh before leaving a wet kiss there that’s more tongue than lips. “You already gave me mine. You already- My shepherd takes such good care of me. He gets to- I want him to use me now. I’ll never, ever leave him. Never, ever.” Dean feels the rest of his brain leaving him again when he slumps forward. “My body’smy shepherd’s body. Be a good sheep.”

Out of the corner of his vision, Dean sees a bead of precome trail down Castiel’s cock. It makes his own hips twitch in sympathy.

“Dean,” Castiel’s voice is choked up. He clears his throat, though, and his tone is smooth and kind again- always kind- when he says, “You wouldn’t mind much, then, if I bound them for you?”

“Please, Castiel.”

Dean isn’t sure what to expect, but one second his wrists are free, held close on his own volition, and the next he feels the pull of rope trapping them together, the tail ends of the bow of it trailing down and tickling the soles of his feet. He moans at the sensation. That’s it, all he needed. Wrapped up tight in his stable, waiting for his shepherd. He doesn’t think. He opens his mouth and waits patiently.

Castiel’s palm is wide where it presses against the back of Dean’s neck, guiding him in where he goes willingly. “That’s it. Here you are.”

He has his cock in his left hand, Dean’s head in his right, and he uses them in tandem to line himself up with Dean’s lips. Dean has his tongue out again, can’t help it, stupid with it, and Castiel rubs the head of his cock up and down there. It’s slick and Dean can taste the salt of precome. He wants it so bad but he’s a good lamb, good for his shepherd, all tied up for his shepherd, so he waits very politely and patiently instead. Finally, the buzzing nerves in Dean’s body go quiet when Castiel’s cock goes in, in.

“Oh,” Castiel breathes above him. Dean looks up from under his eyelashes to watch the way Castiel’s chest shakes. “Oh, Dean. Oh, little one. Just relax, I’m going to protect you.”

Dean doesn’t ask what from. Couldn’t even if he wanted to. But the answer becomes apparent when Castiel guides Dean’s mouth down further. More of his dick slips in, inch by inch, until a hazy far away part of Dean’s brain is aware he usually would have gagged by now. There’s more of it until Castiel’s entire cock is buried inside of Dean here, and even though he’s touching the back of Dean’s throat, it doesn’t hurt.

“You shouldn’t feel any pain at all, just pressure. Are you comfortable?”

Dean moans until his drool slips down and wets Castiel’s pubic hair.

“I’ve had such a long day out in the pastures,” Castiel says. He scratches Dean’s hair with his fingernails. “Aching with need while I watched you and cared for you. Tend to your shepherd now, darling lamb.”

Those words set Dean free. He’s nothing but a doll, a beautiful and precious object made for worship because he loves his shepherd so much and would do anything for him. He feels it when he makes muffled noises over Castiel’s cock, where it fucks in and out of him and swells his lips up. His nose hits the scratch of Castiel’s pubes with every thrust until the tip of it comes back damp from his spit that’s gotten trapped in the wiry brown hair. His nipples are hard and his dick is trying valiantly to make an appearance, but it doesn’t matter. The whole time Castiel guides him. In and out. In and out. Dean never so much as gags. He’s just limp. He’s just staring up at Castiel’s face like he’s staring up at the stars that hang above the junkyard at night.

“That’s right,” Castiel is saying to him. He’s grown ragged and his cheeks are red. “Mmm. That’s it, sweet boy. You take it so well. You worship your shepherd well. Take me into your throat now, let me fill you up just like I promised I would. Nice and full, darling lamb. I’ll keep you right here forever. Your head empty and your mouth full, and every day-” he stutters, losing his composure and almost losing himself before growling- “every day I will come ‘round your pasture and I will bend you over your little wooden fence and I’ll hold your hands behind you, hold your little body against mine and stuff my cock into you. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”

Dean’s answering whine is split into three separate hiccups as Castiel’s dick interrupts his airway over and over again.

“Oh, Dean,” Castiel moans, cries, lip trembling as he looks down at Dean with a waterlogged blue gaze. “You are everything to me. My darling. I love you, I love you, please, can I come in you like this?”

It’s hard to nod but Dean does his damnedest. The message must get across well enough because one second Castiel is thrusting in and the next his cock is buried down into Dean’s throat, pulsing there, so deep that Dean can’t even taste the come as it shoots out. Can’t even breathe. His eyes roll with ecstasy in his head.

He loses track of things from there. Snippets of movement happening around him like a daydream- Cas’s safe, warm body curling to protect him, kisses being pressed all over his face, and a hand petting down his back. It doesn’t matter that Dean can’t understand a thing Cas is saying to him, not when the tone of the words themselves puff out as comforting as fireplace smoke. His arms must’ve been freed at some point because, for one miraculously lucid second, he registers that he has them wrapped around Cas’s shoulders.

There’s a change in scenery an impossible amount of time later. A blur of textures when they move from Dean’s bedroom to the hallway, and then everything becomes an off-white color, so they must be in one of the bathrooms. But Dean can’t remember walking. Did Cas carry him all the way from his bedroom?

The love inside of Dean might just kill him, right now, in this exact lifetime where he is Dean Winchester and where he’s got a semi-angel, semi-rebel creature of a human of a boyfriend named Cas. Someone who can play Flappy Bird with the same hand he’d taken a knife through. And he wishes any of what just happened was embarrassing, but it felt so good- all of it- that he can’t even find it in himself to be ashamed. The whole night just sits timid and lovely inside of him.

When Dean opens his eyes in any substantial way, his suspicions of being in the bathroom are confirmed. In fact, when he lifts his hand and hears a splash, he becomes very immediately aware of the fact that he’s in a bathtub. The water sits at a temperature that turns his skin pink, and there aren’t any suds lining the water’s surface so when he looks down he can see his naked body through the rippling body.

“Mmmm,” he hums under his breath.

“Dean?”

When Dean looks over to his left, Cas is kneeling on the tile floor beside him. He’s not naked anymore, wearing a pair of Dean’s old sweatpants and one of Dean’s even older t-shirts that has a faded design of a horse on it. Sam had bought it for him as a joke for his 19th birthday. Or maybe Sam stole it, now that Dean thinks back. Who’s to say? Not that it matters much compared to how bittersweet it is to see one of Dean’s ragged memories of childhood hanging off of Cas’s broad shoulders like that.

“Hey, sweetheart,” and his voice spills his love like it’s also spilling the beans. Cas smiles at him. Dean could cry, curl up into a little ball in the pocket of his own sweatpants that are currently on Cas’s body and never leave. “How long have I been gone for?”

“Fourteen minutes. Not long at all.”

“Long enough that you could drive to the post office in that time.”

“Luckily for you, I have nothing to mail,” Cas says.

Dean swallows the lump in his throat. He’s not so sure what to do with the unconditionality of the way Cas drew a bath for him and lowered him into the tub in a display that was most likely way too tender for a person who’s done the shit that Dean has done. There’s adoration coming from a place in his tummy that hasn’t seen the light of day since Dean was four years old. Like his mom leaning over his tiny twin bed and giving him a kiss goodnight- that same unflinching love that you’re too young to question. Never wondering whether it’s real or not because it’s your mom and it’s always real. When you’re four, love is the expected state of the world because it never occurred to you that there were any other options.

That’s how Dean feels now. Like he isn’t so sure- doesn’t know how to trust it after all these years- but Cas makes him feel like being loved is unpreventable. That he could run miles in the opposite direction and Cas would still come looking for him to make sure he was okay.

He doesn’t know how to express any of this, wouldn’t even if his brain didn’t feel like someone took it to a hippie festival with seizure lights, so he stretches a wet hand out of the bathtub instead. Cas reaches up and holds it. Dean closes his eyes.

After a deep breath he says, “This big, ol’ bathtub is feeling awfully lonely with how naked I am. I might get cold.”

Cas does this little coughing noise in his chest that makes Dean peek out from under his eyelashes. His expression is lovely, dark red cheeks and dark hair where he stares at Dean and says, “You tempt me.”

“That’s the point. Now ditch the stitches and spoon me until our fingers turn into raisins.”

Dean closes his eyes again and he feels Cas press a kiss to the back of his hand before he finally lets it fall to the side of the tub. The sound of fabric rustling and shedding is almost tempting enough to have Dean cracking an eye open again, but he feels so well-earned tired here that he thinks maybe he doesn’t have to peek to know exactly what Cas’s body looks like and exactly how much he loves it. Besides, it’s only a second later that he gets to feel all of it against him when Cas touches his shoulder to whisper, “Lean forward,” before sliding in behind Dean like a second skin.

His thighs bracket Dean’s hips and his arms wrap him up in holiday bows and Dean lets his head lean back, back, resting there against Cas’s neck. They just sit in the quiet for a little while together, the silence broken by the occasional splash of water when one of them shifts. The bath stays miraculously warm the whole time. Two little birds who don’t know any better than to be close to one another.

“How was it? For you? You were so breathtaking,” Cas finally says, his low voice echoing around the bathroom, and he is unapologetic about how openly he loves Dean.

It hurts Dean’s chest like he’s stretching the muscles there for the first time.

“You sure know how to make a guy blush, sweetheart. It was, uh… It was kinda crazy. Good crazy. Like you knew what I needed even more than I knew what I needed.”

“That was the point of this exercise, wasn’t it?”

Dean laughs under his breath. “Yeah. Guess it was.”

“And… now. How do you feel?”

“I can’t tell. Not bad, just… like I love you a lot. Like my brain got replaced with a Jell-o dish from the '60s.” The truth is Dean’s still wired, deep under his skin in the places that Cas unearthed before Dean even knew they existed- places that still call out to go home until Dean is just as restless as he is worn out. He reaches down into the water where Cas’s hands are resting on Dean’s soft stomach, grabbing them both and bringing them up to his damp chest. He clenches his jaw. Releases it. “Touch me?” he requests on a broken breath.

Cas’s hands draw soothing lines along Dean’s clavicle before venturing lower under his pecs, massaging his tired abdominal muscle and letting his ticklish fingers dip below the water again to trace around Dean’s belly button. “Like this?”

“More.” Dean shifts his hips.

“More?”

“Mhmm.”

“Like this, then?” Cas’s fingers trail like feathers over Dean’s nipples before sweeping down to disrupt the water’s tension so he can rasp his fingernails through Dean’s pubic hair.

Dean twists to hide his face in Cas’s neck because the whimper that comes out of him sort of feels like his soul is coming out with it. “Fuck.”

“I’ve got you,” Cas says before wrapping a loose fist over Dean’s half-hard dick. “Are you too sensitive?”

“No. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.” It feels like fucking sunshine on him, like Cas put a lighthouse in Dean’s stomach. He wants Cas in him so bad. And then Dean is chuckling under his breath at the ridiculousness of this all and saying, “I made you do all that work and you’re still letting me boss you around.”

Cas strokes Dean’s cock and takes whatever meager fight he had been holding on to out of his body. “I assure you, the acts we just performed were in no way a reflection of my employment status.”

“Ha!” The peel of laughter comes with Dean throwing his head back. “Are you this funny on purpose or is it on accident?”

Cas kisses Dean’s cheek gently and then says, sheepish, “Mostly on accident.”

“It suits you,” he smiles. Cas’s stroking hand keeps up its rhythm that’s so slow it creates a lazy river worth of waves on the bathwater’s surface. It’s so very tame. Touching Dean not like they’re having sex, more like he just wants to be there to touch in general. “That’s nice, Cas. Like that’s good, don’t wanna come in the water.”

“I could clean it for us after,” Cas offers.

“Still gross on principle.”

“If you say so,” and Cas’s dubious tone makes Dean smile wider with his fried brain synapses.

They sit that way for what has to be another five minutes, Dean guesses, before his hips start to do the cha-cha up to meet Cas’s fist in a way that means it’s closing time. Sweet Cas. Ugh. His chest feels so nice against Dean’s back and the water’s still warm and it takes a Herculean effort for Dean to say, “Okay, if I don’t call it quits now we’ll end up swimming with sperm, and I don’t mean the whale kind.”

It takes an extra second longer for Cas to register what Dean’s saying to him, but after a beat he releases his hold on Dean’s dick finger by finger. Instead, he uses the same hand to rub circles on Dean’s stomach.

“Does that mean we’re getting out of the bathtub?”

“Unfortunately.”

They hobble to a stand together and spill a decent amount of water onto the tile outside of the tub with their uncoordinated movements because neither of them thought to pull the drain plug out before getting up. Oh well. It’s a bathroom, what’s some water gonna hurt it anyway? It takes an embarrassingly long stretch of seconds for both of them to hop the lip and get their feet on steady ground. When Cas turns to reach for a nearby towel, Dean watches him. Watches the tan of his narrow hips, the strong V that they make, and where it points down to his dick that’s seemingly just as interested as Dean’s is. Water beads and catches on the hair of Cas’s thighs. That one vein in his forearm pulses.

Dean isn’t entirely sure what comes over him in that second. He’s wet from the chest down, feeling warm and horny and loopy, and his fingers are pruned up because Cas stayed in the tub with him long enough for them to wrinkle. Needy the way a little kid is needy. Wants to be corralled the way a sheep is corralled.

“Cas?” he calls quiet.

Cas turns to him and tilts his head in question.

“If you catch me before I make it to the kitchen, I’ll let you fuck me in there.”

“Catch you-?” Dean hears Cas’s baffled voice say, but it’s already five feet behind him when he runs ass naked into the hallway, his wet feet slapping like skipping stones on the cement floor. Even more distance between them when Cas shouts, “Dean!”

He can’t even pay attention to his dick swinging back and forth almost comically between his legs because he might be fast but he knows that Cas is faster, so he can’t waste a second of his speed or concentration to look down. His adrenaline makes his heart lurch, and even though all he wants is for Cas to catch him, he can’t make himself slow either. It takes him getting down the entire length of the hallway before he realizes he’s smiling. Dean can have this with Cas. They can be kindergarteners playing tag with each other, where you run in circles hoping desperately that you don’t get tapped at the same time that the game would be completely pointless if you weren’t.

Dean’s laughing out loud when he rounds the corner that leads to the kitchen’s entryway. In his distraction of joy, he almost guillotines himself on Cas’s outstretched arm, where Cas is leaning casually against the brick of the wall. It makes Dean slow so fast that he could imagine cartoon dust coming up from the skid of his heels trying to find abrupt traction on the floor. Between one panting breath and the next, Cas has an arm around Dean’s waist like a lasso.

“You forget so quickly that I’m not limited to human forms of transportation,” Cas says as he steers the both of them into the kitchen.

There’s no way Dean should be as excited as he feels right now after losing a game he made up. Oh well, maybe he had been hoping to lose anyway. When Cas guides him to their wooden eating table and bends Dean forward over it, Dean thinks he might never want to win anything ever again. “Sorry, Castiel,” he murmurs over his shoulder, and he thinks he sounds more like a damsel in distress than he does apologetic.

“Don't be sorry for having fun. Besides, you were right, I liked chasing you here.”

In for a penny, in for a pound, and Dean’s defenses are disastrously lowered with the current state he’s in. Doesn’t know if he’s feeling brave, stupid, or just plain loved when he wiggles his ass like a siren sin in Cas’s direction. He licks his bottom lip before he bites it. That feels good, too. “Maybe you’ll have to get me a bell to keep track of me, Shepherd.”

Dean’s stomach tightens even further when he hears Cas moan at his words. Then he says, “That’s not funny, Dean.”

“Do I sound like I’m laughing right now?”

There’s only a single moment of stillness at his response before he feels Cas lean in over him. The new angle pushes Cas’s hard cock up against Dean’s ass and he wants it like an independent little boy wants a bedtime, like a stray dog wants a place at the table, like a wax figure wants a heartbeat. Oh, Dean wants it. Grinds against it. Loves the feel of it and loves the being it's attached to.

Cas’s chest is solid weight along Dean’s back now, his nipples stiff in twin points against Dean’s shoulder blades, when he says breathily next to Dean’s ear, “You need me to put a bell on you, is that right?”

“Fuck. Uh-huh.”

“And what else do you need from me, lamb?” Cas’s voice is just the right side of commanding.

Dean grins into the grain of the table.

“How much time do we have?”

.